Who is this guy? Banker, engineer, MBA, wannabe watchman, Mangaluru airport bomber

Bengaluru: A former banker and engineering grad who surrendered to the police here claiming to have planted a bomb at the Mangaluru International Airport on Monday told his interrogators that he learnt how to make explosives from YouTube videos.

Aditya Rao, a resident of Manipal near Mangaluru, surrendered at the office of the director-general of police in Bengaluru Wednesday morning, and confessed to planting a 10 kg improvised explosive device (IED) at the airport. But he did not reveal as to what motivated him.

Police on Monday had released CCTV footage showing a man wearing a white shirt and a white cap leaving his laptop bag at a ticket counter of the airport. The former bank employee said he panicked upon seeing that footage released within hours of the incident.

The 36-year-old man has been handed over to the Halasuru Gate police station. A police team from Mangaluru is arriving to investigate him.

Police said Aditya Rao, a mechanical engineer with an MBA, seemed to have mental health issues. He was arrested in 2018 and sent to jail for nine months for making a hoax bomb call to the Kempegowda International Airport (KIAL) at Bengaluru. He told his interrogators then that he had applied for a security guard’s job at the airport and was upset to be rejected.

Aditya also has theft cases against him at the Jayanagar and Suddaguntepalya police stations in Bengaluru.

Aditya Rao once had a job at a private bank on Mahatma Gandhi Road in Bengaluru. He quit that job saying he could not stand the air-conditioning. He told police he chose not to marry as he did not want a dependent.